Graphics

free & premium A personal favorite, CM has millions of users and items for sale. You can find anything from fonts, mockups, logo templates, stock photos and more. They also offer 6 free items every week.

free & premium A great option if you don’t want to pay for premium graphics – in exchange for an author credit, you can use any of their millions of designs (and growing). Or you can pay monthly with no author credit.

premium One of the most popular branch of the Envato marketplace, Graphic River is dedicated solely to graphic design. It’s a great place to get product mockups – they have some really niche-specific ones!

free & premium Run by Freepik, this site is the one-stop-shop for icons. They have awesome features like the ability to generate an icon font or seamless pattern. You can download free with an author credit or pay monthly.

premium Tired or ridiculous-looking stock images that you can recognize from a mile away? Twenty20 is the gold mine for authentic non-stock-looking stock photos. Get $40 off your subscription with my referral link!

premium If you’re looking for premium, professional grade photos with tons of options to choose from, Shutterstock can’t be beat. Their amazing tag system helps you narrow down to exactly what you’re looking for.

free & premium Some of CM’s top selling products are fonts! This is the jackpot for calligraphy and handwriting style fonts – which is a great, more affordable alternative to paying for pricey custom hand-lettering!

free This is probably the best curated collection of high-quality, free for commercial use fonts. It has great classification and style tag systems , or if you’re not sure what you want browse the Hot or Recent lists.

free As you can probably tell from the name, this site has a LOT of fonts. Not all are free for commercial use (only personal) but there are tons of options to choose from. Check the license before downloading.

free & premium This is a great, all-around typography resource. Jeremiah (the author) has hundreds of fonts logged here with descriptions, usage, pairings, and more. He also offers some paid type resources.

Domain & Hosting

From plenty of experience (good and bad) these are the BEST places to go

premium We’ve seen a LOT of hosting sites, and most were horror stories. Siteground has been nothing but amazing. The best? They have 24/7 chat support that will solve your issue in less than 20 minutes (we’ve counted).

Website

free The most popular website platform out there…you’ve probably heard of it. Even with the rise of other platforms like Squarespace, WordPress continues to be the BEST framework on the market. It’s content structure makes it the most SEO-optimized option right out of the box.

premium Of all the themes, plugins, and extras for Wordpress, Divi ranks above all. It has the visual editing power of Wix with unlimited design customization and optimized for content & SEO due to the WP framework. It’s sister theme, Extra, is specifically for magazine & blog sites.

premium For more premium WordPress theme options, Envato’s Themeforest is a great place to get started. With thousands of options, they have themes for every interest, industry and niche. They also offer premium Woocommerce themes.

premium To add extra functionalities to your website, you’ll need plugins. Sometimes the free plugins from the WP library aren’t enough, which is why this site is important to save – thousands of plugins, most for less than $25.

Marketing

free & premium If you have a website, you’ve probably heard that you should be capturing emails. Mailchimp is one of the most popular (and most reliable) email marketing platform out there, and they add new features all the time.

free Do you schedule your Instagram posts ahead of time? Services like Buffer require you to hit the post button when the time comes, but not Wisel.it! Just upload the images, add description, and set a time. They post for you!

premium with free trial THE best investment I’ve made since starting my business, and that’s saying something! For only $10/month, Lucky Orange records every visitor’s experience on your website in real time. You can chat with them, generate heatmaps and more!

Business

free & premium Dubsado is a CRM made in heaven. Seriously. I’ve saved SO MANY HOURS of work. This platform is amazing and a must-have for all creative entrepreneurs. It’s free forever for up to 3 clients. Use code adventure to get 20% off!

free After many many hours of frustration and confusion in Quickbooks, I finally found Wave. It was the solution to all my problems – great, fast Bank & Paypal integrations, easy transaction panel, and 100% free!

free & premium Dropbox pretty much wrote the book on online cloud storage, and for a good reason. I keep all my files here and share with clients so they can comment directly on the artwork. It also syncs to my computer automatically.

premium The Creative Cloud is essential for anyone serious about design or even just wanting to explore the world of visual editing. They have awesome discounts for students & teachers, so see what you’re eligible for when you sign up!

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